Bloc Festival shut down, oversold and underprepared? (Updated)

It looks like you're using an ad blocker. That's cool! We get it :)
You can support us by sharing this story or following us on Facebook.

Back to Top

Bloc Festival shut down, oversold and underprepared? (Updated)

Twitter was buzzing last night with stories of chaotic scenes at London’s Bloc electronic music weekend festival. With a seriously big lineup including the likes of Snoop Dogg, James Blake and Flying Lotus, the festival was apparently massively oversold, with the police having to be called in to help evacuate the thousands that had turned up to the London Docklands venue.

Many irite festival-goers voiced their concerns on Twitter of serious overcrowding and extremely long queues to get into tents, with some people experiencing waits of over two hours. It was described as a ‘car crash’ and ‘seriously badly organised’. Bloc have put this message on their website, and it’s good to see that people will be getting refunds, but it seems like many of the errors made could have been easily avoided.

Thankfully evacuation was a peaceful affair and the venue may open again on Sunday *UPDATED* Sadly, the whole weekend has had to be called off. You can follow reactions on Twitter by checking the #bloc hashtag.

*Further Updates*

An interesting report from Dummy includes a statement from the Metropolitan Police, which is as follows:

“The problem stemmed from rain, and people hiding under cover during the showers, creating huge ‘pinch-points’. [This created the issues], rather than any over-ticketing.”

So, perhaps the Great British Summer is to blame after all? There’s certainly a lot of people out there who had their weekend plans ruined, although it seems that there are quite a few parties taking place at various venues around the capital with some of the lineup who weren’t able to play. Helpfully, this brilliant map has been created to show options open to you if you’re a ‘bloc refugee’!

 

Comments

Related Posts